Dear friends and colleagues,
Together with the entire MTS team, we were lucky to get an interesting and ambitious task: we are creating a sustainable, competitive and dynamically developing digital ecosystem based on the strongest telecom brand in Russia. This is a big challenge in the current competitive environment and an equally big responsibility to our shareholders, customers and employees.
In 2021, we managed to implement a number of important strategic initiatives and achieve sustainable financial performance in terms of both revenue and net income. MTS grew at a rate faster than the market rate and increased its year-on-year consolidated revenue by 8% to 534.4 BRUB and net income by 3.4% to 63.5 BRUB, respectively. Our core telecom business went on demonstrating stable and strong growth in both mobile and fixed-line segments. The launch of KION online cinema provided MTS with a strategic breakthrough in the field of media, the retail chain demonstrated increased sales of smartphones and accessories. The revenue in the cloud technologies segment almost doubled year-on-year; while the reliability of MTS Bank’s business strategy allowed it to quickly achieve a significant scale and autonomy in the financial transactions market.
We are proud of the actively developing system of partnerships for creating new digital products. In 2021, the number of users of the MTS digital ecosystem increased by 40% accounting for almost 9 million of them today. I would like to note that, in 2021, the MTS Premium subscription, the number of users of which has doubled over the year, is recognized in Russia as one of the ecosystem subscription leaders.
We see the efficiency of the Company’s long-term development strategy aimed at creating the best user experience for dozens of millions of private and corporate customers. Our operating results made it possible to demonstrate a decent level of return for our shareholders: in 2021, MTS completed the implementation of a three-year dividend policy and a share buyback program at the end of the year.
For the past two years, we have lived and developed our business in the tough pandemic conditions. This time has become an important stage in the internal MTS transformation: we have dramatically accelerated digitalization and adapted our business processes to the new realities. The Company structure has been significantly updated reflecting both the ongoing changes in the processes to meet new challenges, and the gradual business verticals’ development. In 2021, we separated out MTS tower and network infrastructure into separate areas of importance. We also continue expanding the ecosystem and creating additional competencies in the existing areas through acquisitions: we closed the deal of acquiring Interregional TransitTelecom, a federal provider of intelligent telecom and IT solutions for business; we strengthened the AI vertical by acquiring VisionLabs, one of the global leaders in creating computer vision- and machine learning-based services. In order to expand the ecosystem of financial services, MTS Group acquired Factorin, one of the leading blockchain systems for trade funding, and consolidated 100% of the shares of MC Sistema Capital.
Today, while the market condition remains uncertain, we are elaborating various scenarios so that possible trade and technological restrictions would not affect the quality of services, network upgrades and business development. This complicated task is relevant for any company, but the MTS business has a large margin of safety and feels confident even in unstable conditions, since our products and services are in demand by users. We have a strong strategy, which we believe in, and a sustainable business model quickly and effectively adapting to external factors, which, the practice of recent years has proven. The dynamically developing MTS Bank has a significant liquidity reserve. Today, MTS has a very strong team able to address new challenges quickly and flexibly. The company continues its active transformation to increase its competitiveness, we continue to hire and are open to the best specialists, especially in IT.
Most importantly, we have millions of loyal customers. The ability to create high-quality and reliable digital products for them, to help solve everyday and business problems is an important contribution of MTS to maintaining the sustainability of our society in general.